In a conventional textile printing ink jet recording apparatus of serial printing in the prior art, a loop making section is provided at each of the upstream and downstream sides in the traveling direction of a fabric fed intermittently in an ink jet recording section, whereby the amount of a loop made in the loop making section is detected to control fabric conveying units on a fabric supply section at the upstream side and a drying section at the downstream side (see JP 2005-186419 A).
In the conventional apparatus mentioned above, with such a looped portion of fabric made free, increasing demands to rise its printing speed in recent years have tended to make its printing quality liable to influences from feeding the fabric intermittently in its ink jet recording section. As a result, an improved method of supplying a fabric at increased stability is being sought.
Also, in the case of a control method by an amount of loop, it is primary to controllably start and cease operating the fabric supply and drying sections as well. This has, however, led to the problem that a temporary load produced in the fabric supply section makes it unstable to convey the fabric and also the problem that the need to repeatedly start and cease conveying the fabric in the drying section easily causes a drying spot and makes it difficult to stably achieve uniformity in printing density and coloring.
In the fabric supply section there have been provided a dust removing unit for removing attachments such as dust to fabric surfaces and a cloth guide for removing longitudinal veining that may be produced in a fabric flow direction. Such a cloth guide comprises guide rollers which are designed to extend the fabric towards opposed external sides of the fabric in its width direction orthogonal to a fabric conveying direction and which are disposed at opposed external ends of the fabric in its width direction.
While such a dust remover and a cloth guide are allowed to effectively function with stability in the continuous traveling state of the fabric, in the operating state needed to repeatedly start and cease conveying the fabric they cause the problem that suction to remove dust while the fabric is at a halt may cause the fabric fibers to partially distort and may make the fibers uneven in property and the problem that in the cross guide section, unevenness in mechanical load is liable to occur and longitudinal veining cannot be removed stably.
In view of the above, it is an object of the present invention to provide an ink jet recording apparatus in which a fabric as a recording medium is fed intermittently in an ink jet recording section, wherein the apparatus is capable of printing an image on the fabric with precision and high quality.